“The Pigeon Story,” as it came to be colloquially and intriguingly discussed among Reader editorial staff in the past few weeks, went through many iterations. When its author, staff writer Katie Prout, started hearing curious rumors of “the pigeon lady”—a specter of debatable gender, age, and race who regularly feeds the pigeons downtown—she initially pitched the story idea as a short fluff piece, one that would hopefully break up the intensity of her other reporting on homeless populations, addiction, and mental health. Katie has no particular interest in pigeons—or birds in general, for that matter—but it quickly became apparent that the story of the pigeon lady was larger than that, larger than any one person sprinkling birdseed in the Loop, larger than the “city chickens” themselves. Casual reporting turned into a full ethnography, and Katie began investigating bigger questions about the birds and beauty; about resilience and all-consuming passions; about surrogate habitats and this specific piece of the Chicago ecosystem, its architecture, and its people.
The result is this issue’s cover story, a fascinating walking tour of the Loop with Katie in which she unpacks her own obsession with the mysteriously pigeon-obsessed.
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